“The convent was gone, burned to the ground in a kitchen fire years ago.”1 Would you like to read a short story that begins with this sentence? Writing courses and journals stress the importance of first sentences. They have to have “grab." They have to make the reader want to read on. Every Sunday, I …
Continue reading Grab. Grab. Grab. How grabby are your first sentences?
“I’ve put stickers behind everything valuable in my house because I don’t want my kids to throw them out when I die,” a friend said at dinner. Another chimed in, “Mine will too. They’ll get a dumpster and have a party.” A third said, "I've already given my kids everything I want them to keep." …
Remember the days of going to the mailbox and finding a handwritten letter addressed to you? You’d stop whatever you were doing, find the letter opener, settle into your favorite chair, slit open the envelope, and begin to read. Those were the days, my friends, before emails. So imagine my excitement last October when I …
Maybe it’s because I lived in a glass house when I was growing up—a parsonage where the parishioners could always watch the behavior of the preacher’s kids—that I have developed a love for being irreverently reverent. I love to act out a bit. It’s hard to be perfect all of one’s life, so I happily …
Continue reading Thoughts on True vs. False Selves on a Snowy Day in Chicago
For that nurse or nursing student in your life, consider giving them Caring Lessons: A Nursing Professor's Journey of Faith and Self. My career memoir tells my story from nurse's aide to professor emerita and from diploma to PhD. Caring Lessons will inspire the reader that achieving career dreams are possible! I used to tell my …
Continue reading Christmas Present for a Nurse or Nursing Student – 2013
Sorry about the goof-up yesterday with my post containing my photo and one of the cover of Caring Lessons. Those of you in the blogging world know how things can get sent without intention! I see by my stats that lots of you stopped by, and I thank you for that. Now for the real …
After nearly three-hundred days of prickly, burning, body-wide itching, I may have found relief. I say “may” because I’m not sure yet. My first post about the onset of this itching was last February 11. The itching started on January 31, out of the blue, a day after my left hand turned blue for the …
Continue reading Chronic Itch – Is Relief Possible, Finally?
No kidding. Our Mediterranean Cruise did that to me. Not saying I wasn’t in on the deal, but it made me do it. There’s a gelato place a block from our apartment here in Chicago that I’ve gone to only once and then decided I didn’t like it. But get me to Italy, and I …
The one thing I liked about Marianna from the start is that she looked like fun. Unlike drab me. I was wanting to make a friend to go through the RN completion program with me. Spotting Marianna in the center of the room on the first day of a prerequisite Marriage and the Family class, …
Continue reading Caring Lessons: First Drafts–Finding a Friend to Go Through School with Me
“Just grab the head and don’t let go,” the nurse barked at me. “And the rest of the body will come along. “ I hesitated, frightened. “Just grab it, will you?” The nurse barked louder. “I can assure you it won’t fall off.” It was the summer of 1959. I was seventeen years old and …
Continue reading Caring Lessons: First Drafts–Nursing Care of a Baby with Hydrocephalus in the 50s
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